Based on the book The Palace Letters by Jenny Hocking. This film follows the personal struggle of historian Professor Jenny Hocking as she fights an epic battle against the Australian Government, the National Archives, and the British Royal Family in a landmark self-funded legal action. At stake is whether letters between former Governor-General Sir John Kerr and HM Queen Elizabeth II, written at the time of the constitutional crisis of 1975, are deemed private correspondence and therefore remain closed, or official documents that should be accessible to the Australian people under the terms of the Archives Act (1983). Running for many years, the Palace Letters case* resulted in a stunning High Court victory and opened the secret archives on the Palace’s role in Kerr’s unprecedented dismissal of the Whitlam Government and set a powerful precedent overturning Royal Secrecy and enabling Australians to know their own history.
With unprecedented, intimate access to the private life of Courtney Barnett, this innovative and stylised 16mm feature documentary follows a paradoxically introverted performer and anti-influencer, who, at the height of success, is ready to walk away. Recording her innermost thoughts on a Dictaphone over a period of three years, Courtney begins her slow acceptance of filmmaker Danny Cohen’s camera. This unique filming process mirrors Courtney’s gradual search for purpose and emergence as a woman finally and firmly in control.
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